Working and Creating within Constraints

I’ve been listening to Sting’s “Soul Cages” for the past week – its an album well suited for the steel gray skies of a northern Indiana winter. Evocative imagery, ripe for incorporating into a role-playing session.

At the end of this post there are a few quotes from the album.

This year, I participated in Secret Santa. My assignment had clear constraints, but ample room to navigate. I dove into the project, rolling the constraints around in my brain for a few days. Playing word association, digging out old ideas I had once had.

Song lyrics are another source that would be a great constraint.

Have you ran an adventure or crafted encounters that were inspired by song lyrics? If so what? I’d like to know about them.

Take your father’s cross gently from the wall
The shadow still remaining
See the churches fall, in mighty arcs of sound
And all that they’re containing
Yet all the ragged souls of all the ragged men
Looking for their lost homes
Shuffle to the ruins from the levelled plain
To search among the tombstones
When the angels fall
Shadows on the wall
In the thunder’s call
Something haunts us all
When the angels fall

Two priests came round
Our house tonight
One young, one old,
To offer prayers for the dying,
To serve the final rite
One to learn, one to teach
Which way the cold wind blows
Fussing and flapping in priestly black
Like a murder of crows